Bush and Kerry Spar Over Iraq
President Bush speaks in Dubuque, Iowa.
Dem hits president over ammo
Senator implies missing Iraq explosives just tip of iceberg; president says Kerry too wimpy for War on Terror
http://www.foxnews.com/Kerry Blasts Bush on Missing Ammo
GREEN BAY, Wis. — John Kerry (search) accused President Bush (search) on Tuesday of trying to cover up bad decisions relating to the execution of the war in Iraq and alluded to the possibility that more bad news has yet to be uncovered. "Mr. President, what else are you being silent about? What else are you keeping from the American people?" Kerry said during a speech in Green Bay, referring to the estimated 380 tons of highly explosive material that have gone missing from an arms depot in Iraq.
Although Kerry and the Democrats are blaming the Bush administration for losing the ammo, calling it "one of the great blunders" of the Iraq war, recent reports by NBC and further details given by the Pentagon and International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday suggest that the material may have been missing before the 101st Airborne Division rolled into the Al-Qaqaa facility as Saddam Hussein was being deposed in nearby Baghdad in April 2003.
Vice President Dick Cheney responded for Bush from Florida, saying, "It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad." While the president's bus caravan rolled along a road hugging the Mississippi River, Kerry said in eastern Wisconsin that Bush has misled voters about the justification and cost of war in Iraq, where more than 1,000 Americans have lost their lives.
Bush said Kerry had chosen a path of "weakness and inaction," putting himself "in opposition not just to me, but to the great tradition of the Democratic Party."